[AuburnM5]

Hi everyone,

I introduced myself last night in the starting block with a long rambling history of my audiophile journey. I will spare you the journey here. I basically took a 6 year break from the hobby and just enjoyed what I had. Recently, I got bit by the upgrade/change bug. When we built our house in 2016, we put in a theater/media room and also wired our living room for 7.2. At the moment, I have 4 blu-ray players that all play SACD.
Oppo-103D
Oppo UDP 203
Sony UBP X-800
McIntosh MCD301

While I do plan on adding a streamer to our theater, I own and plan to keep buying discs (SACD, 4k UHD, Blu Ray Audio, etc). '

My question and or looking for thoughts on if it would make sense to potentially sell the Oppo 203 and MCD301 and use that combined money (4kish) to get a new blu ray player that has the same video quality of the 203 and a stand alone SACD player.

I have a McIntosh C2700 tube preamp, so any 2 channel digital source goes into it's DAC and any multichannel music disc is run through my Anthem AVM 90 for processing. I enjoy 2 channel much more, so the thought was getting a blu-ray for around 700-800 and the rest towards an updated balanced SACD player.

Please help!

[WGH]

Hi everyone,

...I have 4 blu-ray players that all play SACD.
Oppo-103D
Oppo UDP 203
Sony UBP X-800
McIntosh MCD301

My question and or looking for thoughts on if it would make sense to potentially sell the Oppo 203 and MCD301 and use that combined money (4kish) to get a new blu ray player that has the same video quality of the 203 and a stand alone SACD player.

I have a McIntosh C2700 tube preamp, so any 2 channel digital source goes into it's DAC and any multichannel music disc is run through my Anthem AVM 90 for processing. I enjoy 2 channel much more, so the thought was getting a blu-ray for around 700-800 and the rest towards an updated balanced SACD player.

Yes, sell the Oppo 203 and MCD301. The McIntosh MCD301 is 13 years old so best sell it while it works.

How do you play SACD? Does your DAC have a HDMI input and play DSD64? I have an Oppo BDP-103, it plays SACD as well but my Anthem AVM 60 doesn't decode DSD so it has to be converted to 192kHz PCM sent through the HDMI. Do to copyright restrictions, SACD audio cannot be sent through the coaxial or optical digital audio output.

I went in another direction and rather than getting a cheap SACD player with questionable electronics I use the Oppo BDP-103 to rip SACDs to DSD64. Good thing storage is cheap, each file is 2 GB. The DSD files are played through a music server that has an Intel i7-9700 processor. The DAC is made by HoloAudio and has 2 DACs inside: a R2R PCM and a DSD Ladder DAC that natively plays the DSD files without the internal conversion to PCM almost all DACs have to do. Lately I have been playing with HQ Player and upsampling DSD64 to DSD256. Fun stuff!

Keep the Oppo-103D, it is the only player you have that is on the list of players that will rip SACDs.
https://hifihaven.org/index.php?threads/rip-sacd-with-a-blu-ray-player.3652/

Ripping SACDs, getting a high powered music server plus a new DAC may not be on your list of important or necessary things to buy right now. But in 5 years when your new SACD player has glitches then a music server will not look like such a bad idea. The sound quality of HoloAudio DACs are a huge step up from the internal electronics of a CD/SACD player.

[artur9]

AIUI, there are several UHD players that meet or exceed the 203's quality of output for video.
OTOH, the 203 has a bunch of rare features that no other single player has.

If you're not using any of those features selling the 203 is a good idea.